Twitter tips

How to make your characters shine on Twitter

By
Holly Morgan
16 September 2014

How to make your character(s) shine on Twitter.

Beloved of news reporters, celebrities, sports stars and politicians, Twitter, the online micro-blogging site, has revolutionised social media. But it’s staggering how little many people are maximising its possibilities. Follow our step-by-step guide to make the most of it for you.

Decide your purposeTwitter is all about connecting with like-minded people using as few words as possible. Setting your intentions for Twitter will help you choose who to follow and what kind of information to share. While Twitter can be used as a source of communication, entertainment and news, you could also use it to promote your business – so choose an appropriate profile picture and username. Now might be the time to reconsider using @monkeyman for the launch of your new accounting firm.Tip: Take a close-up headshot to make yourself easy to identify.

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Get followersUnless you’re a celebrity, it’s unlikely you’ll have more followers than a handful of your best mates when you start on Twitter. To gain followers, create an interesting profile biography, which is a brief description of your purpose on Twitter. This makes it easier for people to find you on Google and boosts your profile’s reach. It should be intelligent, creative and to the point; @pizzahut’s for example, is ‘Ever wonder how round pizza fits into a square box, or why there isn’t delivery in your area? Give us a shout when we do a great job or tell us when we don’t.’ Following others in the hope they’ll follow you back is a common way to gain followers. To keep them, maintain the relationship by retweeting any relevant content they create and favouriting their tweets, which notifies them that you admire their work.Tip: Restrict yourself to 100 characters instead of 140 to allow others to add comments.

RetweetingA retweet re-posts tweets you’ve read and liked, so they say as much about you as your tweets do, while exposing your profile to other users. They are symbolised with the letters RT at the start of a tweet.Tip: If someone frequently retweets you, return the favour.

Using hashtagsConsidering more than 500 million tweets are posted every day, you can understand why it can be difficult to track them all. Hashtags overcome this by categorising your tweets to form part of a specific conversation. They turn words that directly follow it into a searchable link. Some of themost popular hashtags of 2014 include #iphone, #nowplaying and #rt.Tip: #Hashtags are #great – just don’t #over #use #them. Use less than three per tweet.

Get trendingTrending describes topics that are being discussed more than others. It also determines the most up-and-coming matters from across the world, in real time. Last month, the most popular Twitter trends included #MH17, referring to the aeroplane that was shot down over Ukraine, and #4YearsOfOneDirection, referencing the popular boy band.Tip: Keep in mind that topics that have been popular for a while are unlikely to trend again.Tip: According to Sysomos, a social media monitoring solution, Twitter peaks 11am-3pm in the United States. If you’re targeting a US audience, tweet at these times – otherwise tweet around noon in the UAE to get heard.

Protecting you Exercise caution when deciding how much information you want to reveal. Avoid posting information that damages your relationship or employment situation – advice Connor Riley, a student at the University of California, didn’t follow. After tweeting, ‘Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work’. Cisco withdrew the offer. Make sure you don’t unintentionally post private details such as your phone number, home address or when you’ll be away on holiday, either, and try to verify the authenticity of information before acting on it.Tip: Protect your profile with strong passwords. Follow us via @timeoutdubai.

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40deuce Sep 17, 2014 06:53 pm

Thanks for sharing some of our Sysomos research data with your readers.
The number is just a generality though. We would still highly recommend that every account does some research (which they can do with our tools, but I digress) to find out when their own followers are most active to determine when is the best time for them to send messages.For example; a brand that might be focused on teenagers probably won't find between 11am-3pm a great time to tweet, because most of their target audience is in school during that time (or at least should be).